Serov Ivan Alexandrovich
NOTES FROM A SUITCASE
Secret diaries the first chairman of the KGB, found 25 years after his death
Edited, with comments and notes by Alexander Khinshtein
Slavic cabinet of General Serov
A security officer always remains a security officer; As we know, there are no exes. Well, and even more so the former KGB chairmen...
This is not just the memoirs of one of the leaders of the Soviet special services, Ivan Serov. This is the visible result of the last operational combination of the old general, which ended after his death.
Serov calculated and planned everything correctly; old, still Stalin-Beria school. What you are holding in your hands now is the result of this combination, which went exactly according to his scenario. The former subordinates lost this game outright to their chairman.
And you and I, without a doubt, won, because never before have the evidence of “special services marshals” become public, and they simply did not exist in nature.
Ivan Serov kept diaries from the moment he arrived at the Lubyanka in 1939. Most important events and he wrote down his impressions all his life: both during the war and after, and even becoming the chairman of the KGB (1954–1958), and then the head of the GRU - until his dismissal in 1963.
Of course, no one should have known about these diaries. The very fact of reflecting certain aspects of the service, meetings and conversations with the highest authorities, including Stalin, could already be equated to the disclosure of state secrets, and this is at best. (During the war, officers were subject to a tribunal and a penal battalion for keeping diaries.)
Serov made all the notes only when he was alone. He kept notebooks and notebooks covered in round ink handwriting in secret places, not showing them to anyone. I do not rule out that for a long time he hid them even from his wife.
After retiring, Serov did not forget about the contents of the caches. Around 1964, he began working on memoirs, supplementing and sometimes rewriting old diaries.
It is unlikely that he was motivated by vanity. Rather, Serov wanted - albeit in absentia - to defend his good name by telling the truth about himself and his persecutors, at least as he saw it.
Serov considered himself unfairly and cruelly offended. In 1963, as a result of a spy scandal with GRU Colonel Oleg Penkovsky, he was disgracedly removed from his post, deprived of the Hero of the Union Star and three general stars on his shoulder straps (from army general, demoted to major general), and expelled from Moscow. “For loss of vigilance” he will be expelled from the party. (The real reasons for this disgrace will be discussed a little later.)
His memoirs were supposed to be a response to Khrushchev, Brezhnev, Shelepin and other celestials whom Serov considered to be responsible for his troubles. Their quintessence can be expressed, albeit ineptly, but sincerely in his quatrains (oddly enough, the stern NKVD-KGB-GRU general began to dabble in poetry in his old age).
And again I gained courage
And I didn’t hang my head,
After all, the homeland will restore the whole truth
And will give you well-deserved peace.
However, you shouldn’t explain everything just by banal settling of scores. Being a witness and participant in many historical events, Serov considered it important to talk about at least some of them.
“I believe that it would be unreasonable to take with me many facts known to me, especially since now “memoirists” are distorting them arbitrarily,” he writes in one of the versions of the preface to his notes. “Unfortunately, a number of my workmates, who were aware of the events described below, have already finished their earthly affairs without writing anything.”
In fact, none of the security leaders of that era left behind memoirs. In this sense, Serov's notes are a completely unique document, which has no analogues in modern history.
Despite his resignation, Serov did not lose his former skills. He continued to work on his memoirs in secret, not trusting anyone. (The only thing my wife helped was to type up the manuscripts. Already before his death, at the height of perestroika, the secret was also entrusted to his son-in-law, famous writer and film playwright Eduard Khrupky, a classic of the Soviet detective story.)
This conspiracy was by no means senile paranoia. Former subordinates really did not let Serov out of their sight.
His granddaughter Vera recalls how, after the death of her grandfather, while dismantling the office at the dacha, they discovered grooves in the parquet for wiretapping wires. Then, having suddenly arrived in Arkhangelskoye, the relatives found a strange situation there. young man with a suitcase, which instantly retreated, saying: “I’m not a thief.” And it’s true: nothing was missing from the house.
The KGB was hunting precisely for Serov’s diaries: the Kremlin and Lubyanka were not at all interested in the appearance of such a sensational book in the West. One of those whom they tried to introduce to Serov was even the famous Yulian Semenov, a writer and journalist close to the KGB. On February 12, 1971, after the visit of “Papa Stirlitz” to Serov for an interview (he, of course, was brought to his father-in-law by his friend and colleague Eduard Khrutsky), Yuri Andropov reported to the CPSU Central Committee:
“The State Security Committee has received information that former chairman The KGB under the Council of Ministers of the USSR Serov I.A. has been busy writing memoirs about his political and government activities... When working on memories, I. A. Serov uses his notebooks... Serov I.A. has not shown his memories to anyone yet, although his close circle knows about their existence...”
It’s hard to believe, but the KGB was never able to obtain the required documents. Serov hid his archives and manuscripts professionally. Probably, if they really wanted to, they would have found it: they would have turned the whole house over, broken into the floors, ceilings, and walls. But Andropov did not want to resort to emergency and “sharp” measures: perhaps also because in 1956 they were together in rebellious Budapest under bullets.
It is unlikely that Serov hoped to see his memoirs during his lifetime. And on his name, and on most of the personalities and events he describes in Soviet time there was a severe taboo.
What was the calculation then? Why did Serov, in his old age, start such a thing? dangerous game with the KGB?
This will become clear only now...
Ivan Aleksandrovich Serov died in the hot summer of 1990, a couple of months before his 85th birthday. If this had happened at least a couple of years earlier, the KGB would have definitely put an end to their protracted fight and confiscated the memoirs. But in 1990, there was no time for old archives.
My older friend Eduard Khrutsky, however, told me that after the death of his father-in-law, the dacha in Arkhangelskoye was subjected to a secret search, but the security officers (who else?) acted so clumsily that they did not even open the lining of the walls...
Notes of Ivan Serov were found 25 years after his death
In February 1971, Yuri Andropov sent a top-secret note to the CPSU Central Committee, in which he said that his predecessor, former KGB chairman General Ivan Serov, “has been busy writing memoirs about his political and government activities for the last 2 years.” Serov’s unique archive was found only recently - in a home cache. Our columnist, State Duma deputy Alexander Khinshtein thoroughly studied these documents. And he prepared the book “Notes from a Suitcase” for publication.
Ivan Serov
Neither the Kremlin, nor especially the Lubyanka, were at all interested in the appearance of Serov’s memoirs: his dislike with the leaders of that time was mutual. In 1963, as a result of a well-planned provocation, Serov was removed from his post as head of the GRU, deprived of the Hero of the Union star received for the capture of Berlin, demoted by 3 ranks, and expelled from the party. The notes were supposed to be a kind of response to his persecutors. In addition, being a key figure in the Soviet intelligence services of the 1930s–1960s, a witness and participant in many historical events, the general wanted to talk about at least some of them.
It’s hard to believe, but former subordinates were never able to obtain drafts of Serov’s memoirs. The old security officer worked on them in secrecy, for a long time not even trusting his wife. He hid the papers so professionally that even after his death in 1990, their whereabouts remained a secret.
This secret was revealed only now, in best traditions spy genre. Several years ago, while renovating a garage at Serov’s old dacha in Arkhangelskoye, his granddaughter unexpectedly came across a hiding place in the wall. It contained two old suitcases filled with manuscripts and various documents. This was it famous archive Serova.
There has never been anything like this in Russian history before. The notes and memoirs of Ivan Serov cover the entire period of his service in the security and military intelligence agencies. With unprecedented frankness and diary scrupulousness, he describes much of what he witnessed and participated in.
Arriving at the NKVD in 1939 through army recruitment, Serov did a dizzying career. By the beginning of the war, he was deputy people's commissar of state security, then deputy people's commissar (minister) of internal affairs. During the war years, he carried out the most important tasks of Stalin and Beria, organized sabotage detachments, fought gangs in the Caucasus and the Baltic states, and personally arrested the top of the anti-Soviet Polish government in exile.
Service ID of the First Deputy Minister of Internal Affairs of the USSR.
It was Serov who led the deportation of peoples declared enemy by Stalin. But he entered Berlin with the first units, personally discovered the corpses of Hitler and Goebbels, and then took part in the signing ceremony of surrender. Serov is the only one of all the leaders of the NKVD who not only regularly visited the front line, but also personally raised soldiers to attack. He was always sent to where it was more difficult.
Until 1947, Serov remained authorized by the NKVD-MVD in Berlin, where, among other things, he was involved in restoring the production of strategic missiles and searching for German secret scientists.
In 1953, he was one of the few deputies of Beria who was involved by Khrushchev in the operation to arrest his minister - this was due to a long-standing acquaintance dating back to Ukraine. It was Serov, under the patronage of Khrushchev, who would become the first chairman of the KGB in history, and then head military intelligence - the GRU.
It is difficult to even imagine the number of secrets and mysteries to which Serov was admitted. Suffice it to say that the general even sets out the circumstances of his own resignation completely differently from the generally accepted canonical version. According to Serov, a CIA and MI6 agent inside military intelligence, Colonel Penkovsky, with whom the head of the GRU was caught being close, was in fact a KGB agent set up for Western intelligence services for the purpose of disinformation.
This and many other historical sensations are contained in Serov’s archive. For almost two years, Alexander Khinshtein was engaged in analyzing and studying the general’s archive. The result of his work was a book of memoirs by Ivan Serov, prepared for publication, which he provided with notes and explanations restoring the outline and logic of events. The book “Notes from a Suitcase” will be published soon.
Book cover.
Today we are publishing one of the fragments of a unique book.
Bulldogs under the carpet(1947–1948)
In the winter of 1947, Stalin decides to return Serov to his homeland: he is promoted to First Deputy Minister of Internal Affairs.
This was one of the most difficult stages in Serov’s life. In Moscow, he immediately finds himself in the epicenter of Lubyanka-Kremlin conspiracies and intrigues.
By that time, his sworn enemy Viktor Abakumov had already replaced the long-term People's Commissar-Minister, a loyal Beria member, Vsevolod Merkulov. In May 1946, he headed the USSR MGB. (The day before, in March, an administrative reform took place, transforming the People's Commissariats into ministries.)
Serov has been feeling Abakumov’s hot breath behind his back for a long time. A year ago, Zhukov’s generals arrested by the MGB were already extracted from testifying against Serov. Only Stalin's intervention saved him from reprisals. Stalin returns Serov to Moscow, although he understands that Abakumov will not leave him behind.
Soon Abakumov resorted to the same tactics: fabricating incriminating evidence against Serov. At the end of 1947, arrests of his former subordinates began: generals Bezhanov, Klepov, Sidnev. They are required to testify against the 1st Deputy Minister. All of them, after intensive interrogations (Abakumov talks with them personally), accuse Serov of looting, embezzling money and valuables.
This fits perfectly with the outline of previous accusations against Marshal Zhukov and his generals: they are also accused of wagons with looted trophies from Germany.
Abakumov regularly sends all protocols with testimony against Serov to Stalin personally. With the written consent of the leader, arrests of Serov’s people also occur.
The ring of danger is shrinking ever tighter. In February 1948, his former adjutants Tuzhlov and Khrenkov were arrested: this was a direct challenge. They are also forced to testify against Serov; in fact, interrogation reports are written for one, main reader.
And then Serov is again forced to resort to the “last reserve of Headquarters”: as in 1946, he turns to Stalin personally for protection. On January 31 and February 8, one after another, he sends alarming letters to the Kremlin.
The appeals had an effect. Serov reproduces in detail Stalin's call that followed shortly after. Apparently, the leader decided to maintain a balance of interests between his “bulldogs.” And Serov’s letters seemed to convince him that Abakumov was settling personal scores here, and the Generalissimo really didn’t like it when his own wool was confused with the state’s.
Let’s not forget the fact of Serov’s personal merits, who repeatedly carried out Stalin’s direct orders.
Among these “instructions” was the arrest in June 1947 of the deputy chief of security at Stalin’s Near Dacha, Lieutenant Colonel Fedoseev, suspected of espionage.
The Fedoseev case is one of key stages in the battle between the MGB and the Ministry of Internal Affairs, which Serov also recalls in great detail. He presents this historical thriller in a completely new interpretation for us.
Return to Moscow
“At the end of March 1947, I was urgently summoned to Moscow. He arrived, went to Kruglov, and sat there looking boring. I ask: “What’s the matter?” He said the following: yesterday they called him to the Central Committee and wanted to relieve him of his post as People's Commissar.
N.M. Shvernik presents the Order of Lenin. Moscow, September 1952.
Here is how it was. To Comrade Stalin wrote a letter to a Moscow factory worker saying that there was no way to survive from thieves, and gave the example that he bought ½ kg of meat and put it between the windows so that it would not spoil. The thieves broke the glass and took the meat.
T. Stalin was angry that such cases were taking place in Moscow, they called Kruglov to the Politburo and said that we would remove him from his post.
Beria took him under protection, then Comrade. Stalin asks: “Where is Serov?” He was told that he was in Germany. To this he said: “We need to recall him, he worked, things got better. Appoint him 1st Deputy Minister of Internal Affairs of the USSR, and let him restore order properly in Moscow and the periphery.”
At the end, Kruglov says: “Sit down, a decision will come today, that’s all.” I say that we need to fly to Germany to hand over our cases.
Indeed, Poskrebyshev called in the afternoon and asked to come in. I was in the Kremlin, went to get a permanent pass for 1947, Poskrebyshev met me there and handed me the decision of the Politburo on my appointment as 1st Deputy of the NKVD.
For 6 years he was deputy of the NKVD. Now 1st deputy.
The escape of Gregory Tokati
Less than 10 days have passed since I was called late in the evening to the Kremlin, I am sitting in the reception room of Comrade. Stalin, sitting with me are the People's Commissar of the Aviation Industry of the USSR M.V. Khrunichev, the Air Force Commander Zhigarev and some lieutenant colonel. (According to the visitor log, Serov was in Stalin’s office on 04/17/1947 from 22.10 to 22.35 together with G.A. Tokayev (recorded as an employee of the military air department of the SVAG. - OH.)
About 5 minutes later Malenkov came out, and a couple of minutes later Comrade. Stalin, who saw me and said, handing me a piece of paper: “Have you read this letter?” I answer: “No.” - “Read.” And went.
I read a note from Lieutenant Colonel SVA (Soviet Military Administration. - OH.) in Germany Tokayev that not all specialists were taken out of Germany, that he is familiar with a group of German scientists who worked on jet aircraft, while naming professors Zenger, Tank and other names.
The note was written to Comrade. Malenkova. Another note from Malenkov to comrade. Stalin, where it is said that he called the military air force, that all this deserves great attention, etc.
This note gave me an unpleasant feeling. It turns out that I did not identify all the specialists and export them to the USSR, and I was not able to export such a large one as Zenger.
After 5 minutes we were called into Stalin’s office, comrade. Stalin, addressing everyone, says that Comrade. Tokayev wrote a letter that there are major scientists in the GDR who were not exported to the USSR, and he is in contact with them. Then, turning to me, he says: “Do you know such persons?”
I say: “I heard that there are such professors in the West, and if we had them during that period when we took out the Germans, then, of course, they would have been taken out. I know that Professor Zenger worked in Vienna (Austria).”
Then Comrade Stalin says: “Let’s send a commission headed by Serov to the place, which will check everything and report on its proposals as to which of them should be taken to the USSR.” Everyone agreed. I asked to speak and said that General V. Stalin should be included in the commission. Comrade Stalin thought and said: “We agree.” Members of the Politburo agreed.
I asked for this, because if this Tokayev lied in the note, he would not start slandering later. Then I would have had a living witness in Berlin, V. Stalin, who could tell my father everything.
With my wife and daughter. Second half of the 1940s.
In appearance, Tokaev resembles a Jew. Turned out to be Ossetian.
Then Stalin took me aside and quietly said: “You alone fly to Vienna and find out everything about Zenger, he studied there, wrote scientific works. Instructions will be given to the USSR High Commissioner for Austria, General Kurasov.” I said, "It will be done." (...)
We flew back to Berlin. I distributed responsibilities among the members of the commission. Tokayev, V. Stalin, and I went to the area where this group of “scientists” worked.
Even before this, Tokaev told me that Professor Zenger does not live in the GDR, but his “friend” lives in Berlin and works for SVAG. Already retreat. I told Tokayev why he didn’t write this in the note? He avoided answering.
We arrived in a group of “scientists”. I asked Tokayev to show his friend Zenger. He pointed me to a skinny German. When, in the presence of Tokayev and V. Stalin, I asked whether he knew Professor Zenger, I answered: “I personally have not seen him, but I have read his works on aerodynamics.” The profession of this German is an engineer in the Westinghouse system (i.e., brakes for railway cars). Wow aviator!
They started asking other engineers, the picture was even worse. They had not even read the works of Professor Zenger and had not heard anything about him. The “engineers” themselves are not even certified, i.e. did not fully graduate from college and did not receive diplomas. I had a fight and left. They were silent the whole way.
Arriving at SVAG, I immediately turned to Tokayev and said: “Well, what are we going to do next? Where are the scientists that the Central Committee wrote about, where is Zenger’s friend, where is Tank?”
Tokayev, seeing that he had been exposed, also tried to refer to some group located in the Potsdam area. I then said: “Let General Stalin, Tokayev and Academician Shishikin from the People’s Commissariat of the Aviation Industry go there.”
The next day, when the entire commission met, V. Stalin reported that the second group, which Tokayev referred to, was the same bluff as the first.
Then I tell the members of the commission that I have received information that a friend of Zenger actually lives in the Weimar (Thuringia) area, and so I want to go there. The entire commission has nothing to do, so I will provide everyone with a car, and within 2 days you can get acquainted with Germany, but now let’s write a preliminary note to Comrade. Stalin about the results of our check, and we will sign and send it after my return.
And so they did. The encryption was prepared, read out, everyone, including Tokayev, said: correct. The note reported in a calm tone that there were no scientists, that Zenger had never been in the Soviet zone, that this group was developing issues of railway transport, and Professor Tank was in the American zone and taken to the USA in 1945. (...)
Having arrived in Berlin, the whole team gathered, once again read the report about Tokayev’s lies, added where Zenger was, and signed it. Tokayev, embarrassed, said that everything was written correctly. The attitude of the commission members was clearly contemptuous towards him.
Before flying to Moscow, I met with V.D. Sokolovsky and told him everything about Tokayev. He was indignant that such rubbish from the Air Force was sent to SVAG for work.
At the end of the conversation, I warned Vasily Danilovich to instruct the special officers to monitor Tokayev, lest he flee to the West, cowardly that he had lied to the Central Committee. Vasily Danilovich promised to provide all this.
But, unfortunately, life turned out differently. When we flew away, Tokayev took his family and moved by metro to the English zone of Berlin, where he appeared to the British, i.e. became a traitor. Then I read in TASS reports that he spoke on the radio in London, called himself a Doctor of Science and boasted that he was Stalin’s assistant in aviation, etc.
What a scoundrel! I am surprised at the British, who conduct reconnaissance very cleverly and could not recognize this adventurer.
Fedoseev case
The other day, on Sunday evening, at about 9 o’clock, Mikoyan called and said: “Can you come to the Near Dacha?” I said: “I can,” and quickly called the driver Fomichev.
I arrived there, and there were Comrades Stalin, Molotov, Voroshilov, Mikoyan sitting on the covered veranda. They were having dinner.
They sat me down at the table. They began to treat us to partridge and hazel grouse. I thanked him, said that I had already had dinner, but I thought to myself: “They didn’t invite me to dinner.”
T. Stalin drank to my health. I’m all strict, I don’t know why they called me. Then Stalin closed the door and said: “We have the following question for you. Now, if a person lives with me and eavesdrops and spies all the time, leaves the door unlocked, reads telegrams from front commanders on my desk during the war, puts on slippers in the evening so as not to be heard walking, what kind of person is this?”
I answer: “Of course, we need to deal with him. Find out all this." T. Stalin says: “This is why we invited you, to instruct you to figure it out.” I asked, “Where and who is this man?” T. Stalin says: “This is the head of the economic department, Fedoseev.”
I immediately thought: he is an MGB officer, why am I being entrusted with this? Then Comrade Stalin says: “He needs to be interrogated, and also the women who work here, Frosya (the owner), they have seen all this behavior of Fedoseev and will tell you.”
Well, I see that I have nothing else to do, I asked: “Is he here now?” T. Stalin says: “Yes.” Then I say that now I’ll take him and take him to the Ministry of Internal Affairs.
T. Stalin pressed one of two buttons. A man in a civilian suit entered. T. Stalin says: “Here he is.” I walked up, felt him to see if there was a weapon, took him by the hand and said “goodbye” to those present, and said to Fedoseev: “Come with me.” In the car, I put him between the driver Fomichev and me, and we drove off.
In my office, I searched him again, said that we would talk tomorrow, handed him over to the warden, and went home. V. [era] I. [vanovna], naturally, waited, worried. In general, I bring her more excitement in her life than joy. But what can you do, it’s not my fault. This is how the service developed.
With granddaughter Vera, who found the archives, and great-granddaughter Katya at the dacha. One of latest photos. 1989
The next day I began to interrogate Fedoseev. He confirmed. "For what?" - “Out of curiosity, when I removed them from the table.” - “Where did you put it away?” - “He took them away and put them in Comrade Stalin’s folder, which he always took with him when he went to the Kremlin.” - “Why did you spy and eavesdrop?”
He answers quite sensibly that we all, i.e. The security staff tried to watch the owner so as not to disturb him, if he was sleeping, not to make noise, so not I alone, but Kuzmichev (general) and others looked in to find out if he was sleeping, then not to make noise.
Why did you wear slippers? All for the same purpose. In a word, I interrogated him for about 5 hours, and I said everything quite clearly.
His circle of acquaintances is limited. I checked, it's true. In general, quite limited person, although he is a lieutenant colonel, and the fact that he read telegrams is subject to criminal liability for abuse of official position, no more.
In the afternoon Comrade Stalin called and asked to come and report. I went to the Kremlin and reported to him everything that I could find out in advance, and also reported that I was now thinking of calling his wife in order to double-check all this. I will also find out all his acquaintances with whom he communicated, and, perhaps, call his brother, who works in Kyiv in a special department of the MGB. T. Stalin agreed. Then he told me: “Now Abakumov called and said that MGB officer Fedoseev was arrested, and the investigation is being conducted by Serov, not the MGB. Besides, I don’t know why he was arrested. I answered him that you are the Minister of the Ministry of State Security and you should report to me why Fedoseev was arrested, and I will not report to you. And the investigation is being conducted by Serov, because the Central Committee trusts him, not you.”
All these days he is busy only with Fedoseev. I told Kruglov - he waves his hands: “Don’t tell me that.”
I interrogated my wife. Dumb country woman. She worked for Comrade Stalin for 12 years, knows all the gossip. Who lives with whom, starting from employees, including Fedoseev’s, and ending with the big, biggest bosses, i.e. Stalin with Frosya. In general, they spun such dirt that I felt unpleasant.
She said that sometimes in their circle they talked about the improper behavior of some bosses. Sometimes Fedoseev’s brother, who came from Kyiv, was present. The interrogated brother, an employee of the Kyiv Military District, confirmed this. Moreover, the brother turned out to be a dirty man, although he was an MGB officer.
He said that among the repatriates he interrogated a beautiful artist who was mixed up with the Germans, was in Berlin, etc. So he became entangled with this arrested artist, he fussed with her in the office, and then he freed her for a gold watch.
In general, a dirty guy. I had to be arrested.
In total, I've been dealing with these people for about two months now. It seems like he spent everything.
I phoned Comrade Stalin, came to the Kremlin and reported to him that it was possible to finish the case and bring Fedoseev to criminal responsibility, try him in a military tribunal for abuse of official position.
It seemed to me that he was dissatisfied with my conclusion and said: “I think he is an Anglo-American spy. He could have been recruited by the British when we were at the Potsdam Conference in 1945. That's where he was recruited. Therefore, he spied and eavesdropped, and then here he transmitted this data to the Americans. After all, he admitted that he had read the telegrams. This means that the Americans and the British knew our secrets. You interrogate him again and beat him, he’s a coward and he’ll confess.”
At the end of these instructions, I asked if I could bring in one reliable employee for interrogation. T. Stalin agreed. I left.
When I arrived at my place, I immediately wrote down these instructions.
1. No one instructed him to re-read the papers; he did this without permission. His job is to pick up torn pieces of paper and burn them. Check the testimony of [Poskrebyshev] A.N. didn't order.
2. In general, he is a scoundrel. I'm pretty sure he's an agent sent by someone to poison us. He poisoned Zhdanov and me last year. We suffered from terrible diarrhea. And this year 12 security officers were sick.
3. He needs to be questioned hard, he is a coward, and he must be beaten thoroughly.
4. It is necessary to organize intra-chamber work.
5. Warn, let him confess, then [nrzb.]. Let him say who sent him. The Americans failed, so he decided. He lies and deceives. I passed on information to someone.
6. Kuzmichev overslept. He is already lazy, he doesn’t check himself, he trusted [Fedoseev], and this is a cunning figure and fooled him. Check all these facts.
On the way, I had a terrible feeling that Fedoseev was a spy; this in no way fit with his way of life. He didn't go anywhere. Employees live around it and former employees MGB. If a stranger had visited him, it would also have been known.
Arriving at my place, I sat down and began to think. All this seemed rather strange to me. I already regretted that I was entrusted with this matter. I’m not used to it and I can’t do it against my will and my prevailing opinion. It doesn't work out well.
All the days, checking Fedoseev’s connections, he interrogated his wife again. I instructed the investigator whom I hired in the Fedoseev case to familiarize myself with the case and interrogate him.
He came back from the interrogation and added that he stood his ground and asked to see me. I did not receive any new data, although I organized all the necessary “letters”. The brother turned out to be such a talkative piece of trash that it was simply terrifying. In the cell he told everything about himself and his brother, but nothing spy-like.
He summoned Fedoseev for questioning and began hour after hour to clarify where he was in Potsdam. Then I remembered everything and told everything in quite detail. Moreover, I was there near them too, and on a number of occasions he reminded me: “You remember, Comrade General, that you were there.” And indeed it was so. At the end of the interrogation, I brought him up to the question of whether he had been recruited.
It was unpleasant for me to ask about this, because... I was sure that no one recruited him. Fedoseev began to cry and said: “Would I really do such a disgusting thing, being in such a place, provided with everything, what else did I need?” He argues all this correctly.
At the end, I sternly said: “Think again and tell the investigator honestly.” When he was taken away, I, after consulting with the investigator, told him that Comrade Stalin had expressed suspicions of espionage. At the same time, he said that “he needs to be beaten, he’s a coward and he’ll admit it.”
The investigator says: “Let's scare him a little. I told him: “Go to the cell, interrogate, shake him by the collar, but not too much, and come to me.”
After 15 minutes, a smiling investigator appears and declares: “Fedoseev is asking to see you.” I called him. He tells me: “Please call me to the owner, I’ll tell you everything.” I was stunned. Was I wrong? Is it really a spy? I answered him that “I will report your request to Comrade Stalin.”
When I called Comrade Stalin and said that he wanted to tell you something sensible, he replied: “We will call you.” I felt Comrade Stalin’s coolness towards me after he reported that apart from the abuse of his official position, I found no other fault with Fedoseev.
In the evening Beria called and said: “I’ll drive up to the entrance in half an hour by car, you and Fedoseev will go with me to the Kremlin.”
I took the investigator, Fedoseev, and went out to the entrance. Beria drove up, sat down and silently drove to the Kremlin and went to Beria’s office. Comrade Stalin was already sitting there. When Fedoseev entered, Comrade Stalin asked what he wanted to say?
Fedoseev began to stutter and said: “I am guilty, Comrade Stalin, before you, for reading the telegrams, and I am ready to bear responsibility, but I am not guilty of anything else. Now they are interrogating me if I am an American spy. T. Stalin, I served you honestly for 15 years, have mercy on me, I’m not guilty.”
T. Stalin angrily said: “Will you admit who you were recruited by?” Fedoseev: “ Honestly, I am not recruited by anyone.” “Well, then get out of here,” Stalin said angrily.
I approached him to take him away. Fedoseev began to cry and said: “T. Stalin, they beat me." T. Stalin: “Admit it, then they won’t beat you.” Fedoseev: “I’m not guilty of anything.”
T. Stalin stood up and turned his back. I brought Fedoseev out. I had a heavy feeling. At the same time, I was pleased that Fedoseev himself said about his innocence, as if confirming my opinion about him. I was not called into the office again, I asked if it was possible to go, through the secretary, and left.
Later Comrade Stalin called me, and once Beria called me and said: “Well, what’s new?” I said that I had checked every step of Fedoseev and his wife since 1945, and there was nothing suspicious about espionage. Therefore, I am drawing up an indictment to bring to justice for abuse of official position and a note to the Central Committee to Comrade Stalin about this.
Beria frowned, but said nothing. I left. Three days later I did everything and sent it to the Central Committee. The note indicated that under Art. The Criminal Code requires people to be held accountable for this. This seemed to me a harsh measure, although fair.
Two days later Abakumov calls: “Hello!” I answered him coldly. “The owner ordered that Fedoseev’s case be transferred to the MGB. I will now send a special investigator important matters" I replied: “Send it.” (07/11/1948 Serov reported to Stalin in writing that the Fedoseev case was completed. He proposed to sentence him to 20 years in the camps, but Stalin ordered otherwise. The investigation into the Fedoseev case was transferred from the Ministry of Internal Affairs to the MGB and continued until 1950, when he was convicted of espionage and executed. OH.)
Then I called Poskrebyshev, double-checked whether Comrade Stalin had given such an instruction, he muttered something. Then I say: “Maybe I should ask him myself, because... I don’t rely on Abakumov.” Poskrebyshev replied: “No need.”
Everything became clear to me. Stalin is dissatisfied with my “softness” and the fact that I did not listen to him and did not finish the case under the “espionage” article.
Well, how could I do this! This is going against your conscience, against your convictions for the sake of a false opinion. I can not. At the same time, I felt that a thunderstorm was approaching above me. The matter has fallen into the hands of my enemy, and he will try to do everything to discredit me. The mood is eerie.
MGB attack
After the work, I got into trouble, or rather, a provocation from that scoundrel Abakumov. Apparently, he set out to drive me away from the world. But I won’t give in with my bare hands. In order to compromise me in some way, there he arrested Major General Bezhanov, who was the head of the Thuringian task force in Germany. I spoke about him earlier when he detained the director of the locomotive plant.
The reasons for the arrest are unknown to me, but it seemed to me that he was a smart Armenian and during checks by his group they always found order everywhere.
After his arrest, apparently having beaten him thoroughly, he testified against me that when I came to Thuringia (and I was there in his task force only a few times), I took away a whole car of toys. (...)
Apparently, Bezhanov’s testimony was read by Comrade. Stalin ordered the interrogation report to be sent to me. I told Kruglov. He, as usual, was more embarrassed than me, since he was afraid of Abakumov. I told him that I would write to the Central Committee about everything. He began to deny it, saying that it was your business, and I left.
In the heat of the moment, I wrote a rather harsh letter to Comrade. And then, when I read it, I had to correct it, and then sent it.
In the letter he recalled that I wrote in a note to the Central Committee in connection with his appointment as Minister of State Security that he would direct and use the State Security organs against me. And now specific example this.
Regarding the “toys taken away in a car,” I wrote how it happened and said that “this little thing may not have deserved attention, but I decided to tell you about it, since you, Comrade. Stalin, father, you have children, and you will understand why I bought them. Abakumov will not understand this, since he has no children, which means he has no paternal feelings.”
Overall, I think the letter was convincing. I showed it to Kruglov, but he read it and didn’t even say anything. Then he said: “You’re in vain getting involved with him, you see, he’s in favor. Beria is afraid of him.” I told him that when I am right, I will fight until last straw blood.
Three days later we were sitting at Kruglov’s, the bell rang. Kruglov picked up the phone and immediately went blurry (face) and handed the phone to me. It turns out that Poskrebyshev is calling and looking for me.
They said hello and said: “Call the owner 21-24.” I hung up, Kruglov asked anxiously: “What?” I say: “Now I’ll call comrade. Stalin." He waved his hands and said: “Go to your place.”
I went to my room, dialed the phone, it was busy. The second and third time too. Finally he answers: “Yes.” I reported that “Serov is reporting.”
He was delighted and said: “I read your letter. Are you worried or something? I answer: “Why not worry, comrade. Stalin, if Abakumov walks around me with an ax.” Comrade Stalin: “Don’t worry, the Central Committee will not offend you, you have services to the Motherland and to the party. Clear? Don't worry and work."
I began to thank them for their attention and managed to say that my life belonged to the party and the Motherland. Comrade Stalin calmly said: “Don’t pay attention to all this. Best wishes".
I was left with my thoughts in the office. About two minutes later Kruglov came in: “Well?” I answer him: “Everything is fine.” - “Well, come in.” Actually, I didn't want to go to this coward.
When I told him, he waved his hands, laughed, jumped up and down and began asking again: “That’s what he said: “The Central Committee will not allow offense”? He also said, “Don’t worry”? It’s great that you’re not afraid of Abakumov.” Well, such support means a lot to me too.”
About a month ago I tried to read these notes for free, but I couldn’t, they offered to buy them. But yesterday the Internet had mercy, opened the pages, and I began to read.
The KGB learned about this general a long time ago, several decades ago, but the cat cried for details: Stalin’s henchman came to replace the executioner Abakumov, who was no better than Beria. Lubyanka does not like to share secrets with the people, especially those after which you involuntarily shake your head and think: few of us imagined such a thing.
Now our communists are scolding Solzhenitsyn for lies and exaggerations. I agree with the last one, I overestimated the numbers. But, please tell me, what difference does it make to us how many millions of people died in Stalin’s dungeons?
Yes, I admit, there is a difference, but not very significant - a million more, a million less - the essence does not change - the government was criminal. And when you feel it in your own skin - prison and torture, then doubts immediately disappear, instantly.
But this is our homeland, you can’t disown it, it’s not given to everyone to escape over the hill, where, you know, it’s also not smeared with butter, your criminals - you don’t run around the countries in search of better life. And he is responsible not only for himself, but also for loved ones, children, and relatives.
And nostalgia cannot be discounted, not everyone left in search of a better life, many were simply forced.
Reading the notes, you are amazed at the inconsistency of your knowledge, gleaned from the classics of Soviet literature: everyone lied to us! The soldiers of the Red Army, almost all, were noble, honest, did not rob the population, the Jewish question did not exist. The commanders skillfully crushed the enemy.
Until I was fifty years old, I had no idea that such a question existed in our country, and, naively, I objected and argued with my acquaintance, a writer, a poet, a Jew, with whom I went to LitO; I wrote about this in my memoirs.
Budyonny betrayed and killed his boss Dumenko, based on a false denunciation, the commander of the Second Cavalry Corps, Mironov, was shot - this is how the First Cavalry was born, about which Babel tried to write the truth, which Budyonny greatly did not like, and took action against the writer.
“There were jokes about his intelligence.
Like this, for example:
“Tell me,” they ask Budyonny, “do you like Babel?”
“It depends on what kind of woman…”
“Both Voroshilov and Budyonny miraculously survived the years of the Chekist Moloch. It was a miracle and the blood with which the “father of nations” baptized them, because all the sentences, deeds of generals and commanders bore the simple signature of People’s Commissar Voroshilov.
(“We cleaned up the Red Army,” he reported from the rostrum in 1937, “about four tens of thousands of people.”)
And yet: in 1937, Budyonny’s wife, an artist, was taken in as a “Polish spy” Bolshoi Theater Olga Mikhailova. In 1952, at the height of the fight against cosmopolitanism, Voroshilov himself was almost killed - they remembered his Jewish wife, and it was time to let in new blood. Only the quick death of the “leader” saved him from reprisals.”
“But “the country ordered” - and they had to become marshals. Pose for artists. Open parades.
They did it so well that over time they themselves believed in their own greatness. And then the war came, and hundreds of thousands of people had to pay for their mediocrity with their lives - those who were lucky enough to fight as part of the fronts under the command of the “famous marshals.”
I involuntarily thought of an analogy with the current leaders of Ukraine, who 25 years ago could not even dream of being in a leadership position, and now they are trying to bring Russia to its knees - a kind of boyish cockiness: I’ll hit an adult in the ass, but I’ll always have time to run into the bushes. It was they who made the Maidan for themselves in 2013.
“By the fall of 1921, the Dutovites, Ungernovtsy, Kaygorodovtsy, Orenburgers - everyone who went beyond the Asian cordon - was finished.
The time for sentiment is over. A new era was coming - an absolutely cruel and very bloody era, the leaders of which adopted the old slogan of the Jesuit monks: the end justifies the means...
Very little time will pass, and Soviet intelligence will for a long time gain the reputation of the most brutal intelligence service on the planet. A series of kidnappings, liquidations, terrorist attacks, and special operations will sweep the world.
Apostates, traitors, enemies of the people will be kidnapped, killed, poisoned, hacked with alpenstocks in all corners of the earth.
The leaders of the White Guard All-Military Union, Generals Miller and Kutepov13, will be kidnapped right from the center of Paris. In Rotterdam, future General Sudoplatov will present a booby-trapped box of chocolates to OUN leader Konovalets14. The defector, Order Bearer Krivitsky, will be found lifeless in a Washington hotel.”
I first read about General Yakov Slashchov, the hanger and strangler, it seems, from Valentin Kataev, forty years ago, and now I’m reading from Khinshtein in more detail. The security officers managed to convert him, return him to Russia, and appoint him as a military expert and teacher at higher military courses.
It was he who became the prototype of General Roman Khludov in Mikhail Bulakov’s play “Running”.
“But Slashchov was not destined to see his literary reflection on stage. On January 11, 1929, while rehearsals were still underway at the Moscow Art Theater, he was killed.
By tragic coincidence, this happened the day after his birthday. Yakov Slashchov turned 43 years old...
...under exactly the same strange and still unclear circumstances, one after another, many other people were killed - those whose fame rose on the fields of the Civil War. Grigory Kotovsky died at the hands of the former brothel owner (for some reason the killer was given only 10 years). Mikhail Frunze, whose troops once drove Slashchov out of Crimea, died on the operating table. The legendary militant Kamo died under the wheels of perhaps the only truck in Tiflis.”
“No, it’s not for nothing that 1929, the year of Slashchov’s death, went down in history as the year of a great turning point. New times were coming in the country. Collectivization began, the Shakhtinsky affair was carried out. Already a loyal subject, Voroshilov declared Stalin the creator of victory, the greatest military strategist. History was rewritten as it went along, and under these conditions, yesterday's heroes - daring, powerful, selfish - became unnecessary figures, unwanted witnesses. The new rulers of the country wanted to have an absolute monopoly on fame and honor.
Yakov Slashchov was escorted to last way according to Christian canons - on the third day after death. The funeral meeting in the crematorium of the Donskoye Cemetery was modest. The highest person who came to say goodbye to the general was the deputy chairman of the RVSR, Joseph Unschlikht. The same Unshlikht who once led the operation to remove Slashchov from Turkey.
The circle is closed.
Two weeks after Slashchov’s murder, “Running” was banned from showing. The play was removed from rehearsals, without even waiting for the run-through, on the personal order of Stalin, who called Bulgakov’s creation “an anti-Soviet phenomenon.”
How easy it is to attach labels that cripple the lives of others.
“In the spring of 1928, the irreconcilable enemy of the RSFSR, Baron Wrangel - the most important, most dangerous enemy who created the powerful anti-Soviet organization EMRO - the Russian All-Military Union, uniting up to 100 thousand people - died of a mysterious illness. For a month and a half he was semi-delirious. During the autopsy, doctors discovered a wild amount of tuberculosis bacilli in his body, clearly of external origin.
And although to this day there is not one documentary evidence Although Wrangel was poisoned by red agents, few doubt the opposite. Because at least the onset of the baron’s illness was preceded by the appearance in his house of a certain former soldier - the brother of the general’s orderly. Later it was revealed that this brother sailed to Antwerp on a Soviet ship, but it was too late. Both the mysterious brother and the orderly Yudikhin himself disappeared without a trace. Emigrant newspapers wrote that they hastily sailed to the RSFSR.
The new chairman of the EMRO, General Kutepov, also did not last long. In January 1930, OGPU agents kidnapped him right in Paris and took him by ship to the USSR. Kutepov died on the way from an overdose of chloroform.
His replacement, General Miller, suffered the same fate. Like Kutepov, he was kidnapped by security officers from Paris and taken to Moscow, where, like the Iron Mask, he was kept in the inner Lubyanka prison under the name “Ivanov” and secretly shot under the same name.
I do not undertake to justify the bloody actions of Lubyanka. But, before drawing any conclusions, it is necessary to take into account that this cruelty was directly proportional to the cruelty of white emigration: exactly according to Newton’s second law - any action gives rise to a reaction.
In the fight against Soviet power, the leaders of the EMRO and emigration stopped at nothing. They killed Soviet diplomatic couriers and diplomats (just remember the execution of Voikov or Vorovsky). They organized terrorist attacks. Groups of militants were sent to Soviet territory. (One of these groups even tried to blow up a house in Lubyansky Lanes, where the leaders of the OGPU lived.)
Dzerzhinsky. It is difficult to find a surname more unusual for the Russian ear. And at the same time, it doesn’t hurt the ears at all.”
It’s hard to resist quoting Khinshtein’s book, but here’s another quote with which one cannot but agree:
“There is no era more confusing for historians than Stalin’s thirty years of rule. It would seem that very few years have passed since those days, but come on: both in the revolution, and even during the reign of the Romanovs, it is sometimes much easier for us today to understand than with our recent past. And not at all because this era did not leave behind any documents or evidence: on the contrary, we inherited all kinds of papers with interest, but we received almost no documents - in the true meaning of the word.”
“Stalin did not need the old KGB cadres. These people were not suitable for the role of silent performers in the bloody mess that the leader had brewed. They were too smart, too experienced, not to understand the essence of what was happening from the very beginning.
They were destroyed with particular cruelty, because the root of doubt had to be torn out before these doubts had time to infect others: those who came to the bodies through party recruitment, firmly believing that the confession of the accused is the queen of evidence, and the main tool of the security officer is the rubber stick".
After two days of reading, I still didn’t get to General Serov. I hope this meeting is not far off.
Stavropol-on-Volga
Reviews
Well, by God I didn’t want to write, because in Lately came the understanding of the pointlessness of any debate about what comes first - the chicken or the egg, who gave birth to terror and whose terror is worse: red or white, and if we also remember the Decembrists, and Chaadaev, and Herzen with his “Bell” (got through) and the wave of terrorists - bombers who purposefully destroyed statesmen, and betrayals - the entire top of the General Staff, and much more. And the Jewish question - where would we be without it: there is the fact of the participation of world capital and Jewish capital (Ya. Schiff and others), not at their own expense, the small-town Vitebsk, Vilna and other agitators moved through the cities and towns of Mother Russia. And now: you just look who runs all the media, theaters, museums, publishing houses, not to mention finances, so even a rabbi from Israel called on his bloodmates to be more modest, so that the Jewish people would not get into another trouble. Yet again: " Big game will last as long as the last player is alive" (not literally, R. Kipling). But for me, for many centuries now the Russian people have been driven like a trolley from one pole to the other: from Slavophiles to Europeanists, from statists to globalists, neo-communists they are hanging on tightly with the neo-liberals, and neither one nor the other is one or the other - there is no faith in anyone at all; , that perhaps we are on the eve of a “grand nix.” And then the BELL will ring, but not Herzen’s, but a funeral one.
Best regards, Svetlana.
Current page: 1 (book has 67 pages in total)
Serov Ivan Alexandrovich
NOTES FROM A SUITCASE
Secret diaries of the first KGB chairman, found 25 years after his death
Edited, with comments and notes by Alexander Khinshtein
Slavic cabinet of General Serov
A security officer always remains a security officer; As we know, there are no exes. Well, and even more so the former KGB chairmen...
This is not just the memoirs of one of the leaders of the Soviet secret services, Ivan Serov. This is the visible result of the old general’s last operational combination, which ended after his death.
Serov calculated and planned everything correctly; old, still Stalin-Beria school. What you are holding in your hands now is the result of this combination, which went exactly according to his scenario. The former subordinates lost this game outright to their chairman.
And you and I, without a doubt, won, because never before have the evidence of “special services marshals” become public, and they simply did not exist in nature.
Ivan Serov kept diaries from the moment he arrived at the Lubyanka in 1939. He recorded the most important events and impressions all his life: both during the war and after, and even becoming the chairman of the KGB (1954–1958), and then the head of the GRU - until his dismissal in 1963.
Of course, no one should have known about these diaries. The very fact of reflecting certain aspects of the service, meetings and conversations with the highest authorities, including Stalin, could already be equated to the disclosure of state secrets, and this is at best. (During the war, officers were subject to a tribunal and a penal battalion for keeping diaries.)
Serov made all the notes only when he was alone. He kept notebooks and notebooks covered in round ink handwriting in secret places, not showing them to anyone. It is possible that for a long time he hid them even from his wife.
After retiring, Serov did not forget about the contents of the caches. Around 1964, he began working on memoirs, supplementing and sometimes rewriting old diaries.
It is unlikely that he was motivated by vanity. Rather, Serov wanted - albeit in absentia - to defend his good name by telling the truth about himself and his persecutors, at least as he saw it.
Serov considered himself unfairly and cruelly offended. In 1963, as a result of a spy scandal with GRU Colonel Oleg Penkovsky, he was disgracedly removed from his post, deprived of the Hero of the Union Star and three general stars on his shoulder straps (from army general, demoted to major general), and expelled from Moscow. “For loss of vigilance” he will be expelled from the party. (The real reasons for this disgrace will be discussed a little later.)
His memoirs were supposed to be a response to Khrushchev, Brezhnev, Shelepin and other celestials whom Serov considered to be responsible for his troubles. Their quintessence can be expressed, albeit ineptly, but sincerely in his quatrains (oddly enough, the stern NKVD-KGB-GRU general began to dabble in poetry in his old age).
And again I gained courage
And I didn’t hang my head,
After all, the homeland will restore the whole truth
And will give you well-deserved peace.
However, you shouldn’t explain everything just by banal settling of scores. Being a witness and participant in many historical events, Serov considered it important to talk about at least some of them.
“I believe that it would be unreasonable to take with me many facts known to me, especially since now “memoirists” are distorting them arbitrarily,” he writes in one of the versions of the preface to his notes. “Unfortunately, a number of my workmates, who were aware of the events described below, have already finished their earthly affairs without writing anything.”
In fact, none of the security leaders of that era left behind memoirs. In this sense, Serov’s notes are a completely unique document that has no analogues in modern history.
Despite his resignation, Serov did not lose his former skills. He continued to work on his memoirs in secret, not trusting anyone. (The only thing my wife helped was by typing the manuscripts on a typewriter. Already before her death, at the height of perestroika, the secret was also entrusted to her son-in-law, the famous writer and film playwright Eduard Khrupkoy, a classic of the Soviet detective story.)
This conspiracy was by no means senile paranoia. Former subordinates really did not let Serov out of their sight.
His granddaughter Vera recalls how, after the death of her grandfather, while dismantling the office at the dacha, they discovered grooves in the parquet for wiretapping wires. Then, having suddenly arrived in Arkhangelskoye, the relatives caught a strange young man there with a suitcase, who instantly retreated, saying: “I’m not a thief.” And it’s true: nothing was missing from the house.
The KGB was hunting precisely for Serov’s diaries: the Kremlin and Lubyanka were not at all interested in the appearance of such a sensational book in the West. One of those whom they tried to introduce to Serov was even the famous Yulian Semenov, a writer and journalist close to the KGB. On February 12, 1971, after the visit of “Papa Stirlitz” to Serov for an interview (he, of course, was brought to his father-in-law by his friend and colleague Eduard Khrutsky), Yuri Andropov reported to the CPSU Central Committee:
“The State Security Committee has received information that the former chairman of the KGB under the Council of Ministers of the USSR I.A. Serov has been busy writing memoirs about his political and state activities for the last 2 years... When working on his memoirs, I.A. Serov uses his notebooks ... Serov I.A. has not shown his memories to anyone yet, although his close circle knows about their existence...” 1
Petrov N. First Chairman of the KGB Ivan Serov. M.: Materik, 2005. pp. 200–201.
It’s hard to believe, but the KGB was never able to obtain the required documents. Serov hid his archives and manuscripts professionally. Probably, if they really wanted to, they would have found it: they would have turned the whole house over, broken into the floors, ceilings, and walls. But Andropov did not want to resort to emergency and “sharp” measures: perhaps also because in 1956 they were together in rebellious Budapest under bullets.
It is unlikely that Serov hoped to see his memoirs during his lifetime. There was a severe taboo on both his name and most of the personalities and events he described in Soviet times.
What was the calculation then? Why, in his old age, did Serov start such a dangerous game with the KGB?
This will become clear only now...
Ivan Aleksandrovich Serov died in the hot summer of 1990, a couple of months before his 85th birthday. If this had happened at least a couple of years earlier, the KGB would have definitely put an end to their protracted fight and confiscated the memoirs. But in 1990, there was no time for old archives.
My older friend Eduard Khrutsky, however, told me that after the death of his father-in-law, the dacha in Arkhangelskoye was subjected to a secret search, but the security officers (who else?) acted so clumsily that they did not even open the lining of the walls...
Almost a quarter of a century will pass since the death of Ivan Serov. All these years, historians and specialists with light hand his son-in-law was periodically reminded of his memoirs, but no one had ever seen them. Relatives also did not know the location of the archive. The family mainly preserved only official papers: service records, order books, complaints to the Central Committee and the CCP, and literally a few pages with draft notes of memoirs.
It seemed that the former chairman had taken this secret with him to the grave forever, when suddenly...
...Honestly, if I were to film our story, I would start exactly from this moment. Well, something like this:
General's dacha near Moscow. Attached garage. Migrant workers use sledgehammers to break the inner wall. Unexpectedly, an opening opens under the blows. This is a hiding place. Camera zoom in, close-up. Behind the wall, strewn with gray construction dust, are hidden 2 antediluvian suitcases.
They are taken out. Squatting, the workers pick the locks with trembling hands. A glimmer of mystery flickers on their dark faces. But instead of gold and piastres, their disappointed gaze sees stacks of notebooks, notebooks and sheets printed on a typewriter.
...Yes, that's exactly what happened. In 2012, the former house of General Serov on Rublyovka was inherited by his granddaughter Vera. Soon she started renovations. When they broke down the wall of the garage, they discovered a cache with two suitcases inside.
Serov believed that sooner or later the records would reach posterity. (Actually, they are both addressed and dedicated to them.) It seems to me that if he found out in what bizarre way his secret was revealed, it would greatly amuse the general’s pride. Even after death, he managed to confirm his title of professional!
Serov’s diaries and memoirs are a real Klondike for those who want to unbiasedly understand our recent past. By the will of fate, this man was involved in key events 1940-1960s, in literally being one of the creators modern history; suffice it to say that he is the only one who had the opportunity to consistently head two Soviet super-special services at once: the KGB and the GRU.
His records and testimonies are unique in that they allow us to look at the most important historical processes through the eyes of their direct participant, especially since Serov reveals many mysteries and secrets for the first time.
I will not give examples of this: firstly, they simply cannot be counted. And secondly, the reader can easily do this on his own. Suffice it to say that Serov even presents the background to his own resignation in a completely different way, claiming that the 20th century superspy Oleg Penkovsky was in fact a KGB agent set up by Soviet counterintelligence for the British and Americans...
...There is such a hackneyed expression: a man of his time. But Ivan Alexandrovich really was just such a person.
A peasant son from the Vologda outback, an izbach activist, was sent to an infantry school on a Komsomol ticket. Then - the army: a platoon, a battery, a major's sleeper in his buttonhole, the Frunze Academy, which he was not even allowed to properly graduate from. In January 1939, 33-year-old Serov, along with hundreds of other military academies graduates, was sent to serve in the NKVD.
He describes very interestingly the beginning of his work at Lubyanka, his first meetings with People's Commissar Beria: the feeling of a kitten thrown into the water. After Yezhov’s purges, there was a catastrophic shortage of personnel; there was no time for professional skills.
On September 2, 1939, Serov was appointed People's Commissar of Internal Affairs of Ukraine: together with his troops, he would have to annex the eastern part of Poland (Western Ukraine) and clear the territory of enemy elements. But he only has six months of operational experience behind him...
In the future, this will be repeated with Serov regularly. He was always sent to places where it was more difficult, more difficult; crisis manager, in today's language.
Before the war, Serov was already 1st deputy. People's Commissar of State Security of the USSR, then deputy. People's Commissar of Internal Affairs. In the fall of 1941, in the event of the surrender of Moscow, he was supposed to remain here as an illegal resident and organize explosions of enterprises, life support facilities, and the metro. As the head of the Moscow NKVD security zone, Serov did a lot to restore order on the defense line. He created the first sabotage and partisan detachments.
This man had a lot of courage. Serov is one of the few leaders of Lubyanka who personally visited the front line, broke out of encirclement, and himself raised soldiers to attack, more than once finding himself on the brink of death.
In one of his autobiographies (also found in his archive), he describes his participation in the war as follows: “... carried out special assignments State Committee defense of the USSR and the Supreme Commander-in-Chief on different fronts: defense of Moscow, Stalingrad, was in Leningrad, Kharkov, Voroshilovgrad, and then defended the Caucasian passes (Klukhorsky, Marukhsky and others), where he was shell-shocked and lost consciousness.”
Under the leadership of Serov, bandit formations were liquidated in Kalmykia and the Caucasus; he was one of the ideologists of the fight against the OUN and Polish anti-Soviet underground, and personally arrested the top of the pro-English government of Poland and the Home Army.
The NKVD Commissioner for the 1st Belorussian Front, State Security Commissar of the 2nd Rank, Serov, met the victory in Berlin, where he entered with the advanced units of the front. From the outskirts of the capital of the Reich, he was the first to reach Stalin to report: ours are in the city.
Serov writes in particular detail about the war, including the capture of Berlin, and about post-war Germany: these are some of the most striking pages of his life.
He happened to be a direct participant in the greatest events of the 20th century: the signing of the surrender, the Potsdam Conference, negotiations with the allies. He will be the first to find the burnt bodies of Hitler, Eva Braun and Goebbels. In June 1945, according to the proposal of Marshal Zhukov, he will be awarded the Hero Star Soviet Union.
In total, during the 4 years of the war, the general’s uniform was decorated with 6 military orders: however, not all of them were received for heroic deeds.
Serov led the deportation of peoples recognized by Stalin as “enemy”: Volga Germans, Kalmyks, Chechens, Crimean Tatars, Karachais. It was he who created the first filtration camps for prisoners of war and was responsible for the forced mobilization of the Germans. His name is associated with the establishment of the “red order” in the liberated territories: the Baltic states, Poland, Germany, Belarus, Ukraine, Romania.
Carrying out the will of the Kremlin and Lubyanka, Serov did everything that served to achieve the goal. If necessary, he knew how to be both cunning and treacherous: his “trademark” was luring enemies into a trap. (This is how the leaders of the Polish, Ukrainian, and subsequently Hungarian resistance were neutralized.)
I am not going to justify or condemn our hero: as already said, he was a man of his time. Serov was used to not discussing commands, but executing them, for which, in fact, he was valued by management.
His notes mention several dozen meetings with Stalin, not counting many telephone conversations. The leader of the peoples really thought highly of Serov. It’s not in vain that when he went to the front in 1943 (the first and last time!), he entrusted the preparation of the trip to him.
And this was by no means the most difficult task! Stalin regularly gave Serov commands of varying degrees of complexity; many are described in detail in the notes.
After the victory, Stalin deliberately left him in Germany: authorized by the NKVD-MVD and deputy commander-in-chief in Berlin. He was entrusted with the most important mission: the search for nuclear scientists, their equipment and drawings, the dismantling and removal of German industrial enterprises to the USSR. It was largely through Serov’s efforts that the production of ballistic missiles was restored, the supply of nuclear fuel to the USSR was established, and the first Soviet weapons of mass destruction were created.
And when in 1952 the “construction of the century” stalled - the construction of the Volga-Don Canal - Stalin sent Serov to supervise the work on site and... After 3 months the canal was commissioned!
The image of a professional practitioner, a kind of technocrat from the special services, will be of great use to Serov after Stalin’s death. Khrushchev, who was striving for power, trusted him: his many years of acquaintance, dating back to pre-war Ukraine, had an effect.
After Beria’s arrest, unlike most of his colleagues in the MGB-MVD, Serov not only will not be fired or arrested; on the contrary, in February 1954 he will head a new department - the State Security Committee under the Council of Ministers. Even before that, he, perhaps the only one of Lavrenty Pavlovich’s deputies, will be involved in an operation against his own boss.
Serov will be able to demonstrate his devotion to the new Secretary General more than once. In the fall of 1956, he was the first to fly to rebellious Budapest, and then personally led Operation Thunder and the detention of members of the “counter-revolutionary government” of Imre Nagy.
In June 1957, during the first conspiracy against Khrushchev, Serov will do everything to defend the Secretary General: KGB officers, together with the military and the Ministry of Internal Affairs, will hastily bring ordinary members of the CPSU Central Committee from all over the country to Moscow.
The reward for loyalty was disgrace. First, in 1958, Serov was sent to head the GRU military intelligence. In 1963, as a result of a well-planned provocation, he was finally removed from the nomenklatura and ostracized. Until the end of his days, Serov will send letters to the Central Committee, seeking the restoration of his stars and party membership card...
Probably Serov was not entirely convenient person, still old, Stalinist school. Direct and tough, he did not consider it necessary to remain silent or fawn. And his character was also not distinguished by sugariness, he created enemies left and right. This is clearly visible in the memoirs; very often he is not shy either in his assessments or in his emotions.
By the beginning of the 1960s - at the height of the Thaw - Khrushchev managed to safely get rid of all the comrades-in-arms of Stalin's conscription; their place was now taken by new favorites - zealous, young, flexible. Against their background, Serov looked like an old-fashioned, bulky Slavic wardrobe among light plastic furniture; the metaphor is quite appropriate, given that the prototype of Major Fedotov from “The Exploit of a Scout” is the legendary Nikolai Kuznetsov, a militant agent of the 4th Directorate of the NKVD, and one of the organizers of this directorate was none other than Serov.
It is not surprising that “dear Nikita Sergeevich” so easily abandoned his old comrade-in-arms as soon as the opportunity presented itself: there should have been no one left next to him who would remember participation in the mass repressions and humiliations to which Stalin regularly subjected the future fighter against Stalinism.
Serov himself considered his disgrace to be the result of a secret KGB special operation. This was doubly offensive to him; Lubyanka owed many of its successes to him.
Under Serov, the KGB began to transform into a professional intelligence service, where the main thing is not fists, but brains. Foreign intelligence has achieved enormous success. The armed resistance in Western Ukraine and the Baltic states was completely ended. Counterintelligence began to work in a new way. Finally, one cannot fail to note the enormous work carried out by the security officers on the rehabilitation of Stalin’s victims; By the way, it was Serov who was among the initiators of mass rehabilitation.
Meanwhile, modern historians paint Serov’s portrait predominantly in gloomy, black and bloody colors. His real merits and successes are almost unknown to a wide audience, and in most studies he appears as a narrow-minded Stalinist executioner, capable only of brutal reprisals.
Oddly enough, the authors of detective stories rated Serov much higher than historians. In the cult Bond novel From Russia with Love, professional British intelligence officer Ian Fleming put into the mouth of his hero the following passage, clearly reflecting the mood of the West in the mid-1950s:
“Serov, Hero of the Soviet Union and a talented student of the creators of the Cheka, OGPU, NKVD and Ministry of Internal Affairs, was in all respects a larger figure than Beria... Army General Serov, together with Bulganin and Khrushchev, rules the country. Perhaps the day will come when Serov will stand above everyone else on the glittering pinnacle of power.”
What kind of crap and outright lies have been written about Serov. IN cult book The “Great Terror” of Professor Robert Conquest reported, for example, that he personally supervised the execution of Marshal Tukhachevsky and other military leaders, although at the time of the events described, Serov did not even think about a KGB career.
“Among all the main heroes of the terror, he stood out as the most ardent supporter of “large-scale scenes”,” asserted, in turn, GRU defector Vladimir Rezun (pseudonym Viktor Suvorov), listing these “large-scale scenes”: the execution of Polish officers in the Katyn Forest , torture of the leaders of the Vlasov ROA and the leaders of the Hungarian revolution of 1956.
Everything here is a lie from the first to the last letter. Serov had nothing to do with the Katyn execution. Yes, he fought against the Vlasovites, organized operations to clear the front line, but there is not a single fact that he personally tortured prisoners. Likewise, there is no evidence that Serov beat the leaders of the revolution in Budapest: all the work with the putschists was carried out by the Hungarian security agencies, and Serov writes that he was precisely the one who opposed violence against the prisoners.
Wikipedia also reports Serov’s involvement in Katyn. Here, in the article about Serov, it is indicated that his guarantor was a CIA agent in the GRU, Lieutenant Colonel N. Popov. This is generally complete stupidity: if they knew each other, then the operation to expose Popov was carried out exclusively in absentia with the sanction of KGB Chairman Serov. By the time the general transferred to the GRU, Popov had already been exposed and arrested for a year.
Not only Serov’s life, but also his death was surrounded by a series of myths and gossip; They didn’t even allow him to go to another world as a human being. In the West, the ex-KGB chairman was buried for about a quarter of a century ahead of schedule. In a textbook study by Cambridge professor Christopher Andrew, written with the help of defector Oleg Gordievsky, it was directly stated: when Serov was removed from the GRU, “... after a heavy drinking binge, he shot himself in one of the Arbat courtyards”... 2
Andrew K., Gordievsky O. KGB. History of foreign policy operations from Lenin to Gorbachev. M.: Nota Vene, 1992. P. 481.
All these rumors and speculations, many of which are still accepted as true facts to this day, were born for a completely understandable reason. They are the result of many years of oblivion of Serov’s name: the information vacuum that has formed around him.
Even in last years, when all the secrets of the past seem to have been safely revealed, this vacuum has not undergone radical changes. The only serious study of Serov’s biography can be considered the book by Nikita Petrov, published in 2005, however, it also suffers from obvious overexposure and ideological clichés: the author is deputy. Chairman of the Memorial Center, was unable to contain his righteous anti-Stalinist anger. The entire life and work of Serov is depicted in it exclusively in black tones. 3
Petrov N. First Chairman of the KGB Ivan Serov. M.: Materik, 2005.
The book that we are pleased to present to you today fills this unfortunate gap. Authentic life and the affairs of General Serov are now presented, as they say, first-hand.
A few words about what Serov’s archive is and how it was prepared for publication.
The volume of papers found in the cache is enormous: two suitcases jam-packed. I think there are at least 100 printed sheets in total.
For the most part this is diary entries, revised and added after retirement. It is obvious that Serov returned to old materials many times, since he presents the same events in several versions at once with varying degrees of detail.
His archive also contained many copies of various documents: reports, reports, certificates, complaints and statements to various authorities. (We also publish some of them.)
Most of the papers are handwritten, some are typed on a typewriter.
We must pay tribute to the tenacity and meticulousness of Vera Vladimirovna Serova, who spent almost a year sorting out, systematizing, and then scanning this entire gigantic archive. It was with these materials prepared by her that I had the opportunity to work.
We have lined up the entire array of records in chronological order, breaking it into chapters, eliminating repetitions, checking and correcting proper names. However, even in this form, the manuscript remained extremely difficult to understand, so we took the liberty of significantly shortening it, cutting out what seemed to us unimportant and uninteresting, and giving titles to chapters and subchapters. Each chapter is preceded by my short historical excursion.
We have also provided the book with notes that explain or decipher Serov’s narratives, including those based on recently declassified documents. At the end of the book there are brief biographical data on the persons mentioned.
And further. When preparing the manuscript for publication, we did not set out to condemn or whitewash its author. History is never light or dark. It is multicolored.
That is why we are obliged to know the truth about our recent past, no matter how difficult and ambiguous it may be.
Alexander Khinshtein,
member of the Central Council of the Russian
military historical society
October 2015.
Serov Ivan Alexandrovich
NOTES FROM A SUITCASE
Secret diaries of the first KGB chairman, found 25 years after his death
Edited, with comments and notes by Alexander Khinshtein
Slavic cabinet of General Serov
A security officer always remains a security officer; As we know, there are no exes. Well, and even more so the former KGB chairmen...
This is not just the memoirs of one of the leaders of the Soviet special services, Ivan Serov. This is the visible result of the last operational combination of the old general, which ended after his death.
Serov calculated and planned everything correctly; old, still Stalin-Beria school. What you are holding in your hands now is the result of this combination, which went exactly according to his scenario. The former subordinates lost this game outright to their chairman.
And you and I, without a doubt, won, because never before have the evidence of “special services marshals” become public, and they simply did not exist in nature.
Ivan Serov kept diaries from the moment he arrived at the Lubyanka in 1939. He recorded the most important events and impressions all his life: both during the war and after, and even becoming the chairman of the KGB (1954–1958), and then the head of the GRU - until his dismissal in 1963.
Of course, no one should have known about these diaries. The very fact of reflecting certain aspects of the service, meetings and conversations with the highest authorities, including Stalin, could already be equated to the disclosure of state secrets, and this is at best. (During the war, officers were subject to a tribunal and a penal battalion for keeping diaries.)
Serov made all the notes only when he was alone. He kept notebooks and notebooks covered in round ink handwriting in secret places, not showing them to anyone. It is possible that for a long time he hid them even from his wife.
After retiring, Serov did not forget about the contents of the caches. Around 1964, he began working on memoirs, supplementing and sometimes rewriting old diaries.
It is unlikely that he was motivated by vanity. Rather, Serov wanted - albeit in absentia - to defend his good name by telling the truth about himself and his persecutors, at least as he saw it.
Serov considered himself unfairly and cruelly offended. In 1963, as a result of a spy scandal with GRU Colonel Oleg Penkovsky, he was disgracedly removed from his post, deprived of the Hero of the Union Star and three general stars on his shoulder straps (from army general, demoted to major general), and expelled from Moscow. “For loss of vigilance” he will be expelled from the party. (The real reasons for this disgrace will be discussed a little later.)
His memoirs were supposed to be a response to Khrushchev, Brezhnev, Shelepin and other celestials whom Serov considered to be responsible for his troubles. Their quintessence can be expressed, albeit ineptly, but sincerely in his quatrains (oddly enough, the stern NKVD-KGB-GRU general began to dabble in poetry in his old age).
And again I gained courage
And I didn’t hang my head,
After all, the homeland will restore the whole truth
And will give you well-deserved peace.
However, you shouldn’t explain everything just by banal settling of scores. Being a witness and participant in many historical events, Serov considered it important to talk about at least some of them.
“I believe that it would be unreasonable to take with me many facts known to me, especially since now “memoirists” are distorting them arbitrarily,” he writes in one of the versions of the preface to his notes. “Unfortunately, a number of my workmates, who were aware of the events described below, have already finished their earthly affairs without writing anything.”
In fact, none of the security leaders of that era left behind memoirs. In this sense, Serov's notes are a completely unique document, which has no analogues in modern history.
Despite his resignation, Serov did not lose his former skills. He continued to work on his memoirs in secret, not trusting anyone. (The only thing my wife helped was by typing the manuscripts on a typewriter. Already before her death, at the height of perestroika, the secret was also entrusted to her son-in-law, the famous writer and film playwright Eduard Khrupkoy, a classic of the Soviet detective story.)
This conspiracy was by no means senile paranoia. Former subordinates really did not let Serov out of their sight.
His granddaughter Vera recalls how, after the death of her grandfather, while dismantling the office at the dacha, they discovered grooves in the parquet for wiretapping wires. Then, having suddenly arrived in Arkhangelskoye, the relatives caught a strange young man there with a suitcase, who instantly retreated, saying: “I’m not a thief.” And it’s true: nothing was missing from the house.
The KGB was hunting precisely for Serov’s diaries: the Kremlin and Lubyanka were not at all interested in the appearance of such a sensational book in the West. One of those whom they tried to introduce to Serov was even the famous Yulian Semenov, a writer and journalist close to the KGB. On February 12, 1971, after the visit of “Papa Stirlitz” to Serov for an interview (he, of course, was brought to his father-in-law by his friend and colleague Eduard Khrutsky), Yuri Andropov reported to the CPSU Central Committee:
“The State Security Committee has received information that the former chairman of the KGB under the Council of Ministers of the USSR I.A. Serov has been busy writing memoirs about his political and state activities for the last 2 years... When working on his memoirs, I.A. Serov uses his notebooks ... Serov I.A. has not shown his memories to anyone yet, although his close circle knows about their existence...”
It’s hard to believe, but the KGB was never able to obtain the required documents. Serov hid his archives and manuscripts professionally. Probably, if they really wanted to, they would have found it: they would have turned the whole house over, broken into the floors, ceilings, and walls. But Andropov did not want to resort to emergency and “sharp” measures: perhaps also because in 1956 they were together in rebellious Budapest under bullets.
It is unlikely that Serov hoped to see his memoirs during his lifetime. There was a severe taboo on both his name and most of the personalities and events he described in Soviet times.
What was the calculation then? Why, in his old age, did Serov start such a dangerous game with the KGB?
This will become clear only now...
Ivan Aleksandrovich Serov died in the hot summer of 1990, a couple of months before his 85th birthday. If this had happened at least a couple of years earlier, the KGB would have definitely put an end to their protracted fight and confiscated the memoirs. But in 1990, there was no time for old archives.
My older friend Eduard Khrutsky, however, told me that after the death of his father-in-law, the dacha in Arkhangelskoye was subjected to a secret search, but the security officers (who else?) acted so clumsily that they did not even open the lining of the walls...
